Ego
by Carth
Summary: When XANA gains access to the mental data stored on the supercomputer, he is able to create a series of monsters unlike anything the Lyoko Warriors have ever faced or wanted to face - their own personal demons.
1. A Straight Face

Hi, everyone! You know how sometimes things never come out the way you expect them to? I've been planning Five for years and I can't write a word for it, while I've only had this idea for a month and suddenly I know what to do with it! Granted, it's far smaller in scale, but...ANYWAY. I had this idea and the inspiration to write it, and I hope it chills you as much as it chills me. And I hope it makes you like CL, even three years after it ended. C:

Be sure to read the Interlude! That's where the plot actually starts.

**Disclaimer**: If I owned Code Lyoko, you probably wouldn't watch it.

**Notes**: This fic takes place between Music To Soothe The Savage Beast and...the episode after it. For the less refreshed, that's near the end of Season 4. It contains little swearing, but a lot of innuendo and some naked. So, basically, exactly like CL.

**EGO**  
A Code Lyoko Fanfiction  
by Carth

* * *

**Chapter One**  
A Straight Face

The Digital Sea was a lovely shade of blue that evening.

It was never a very good place to be at any time of day, but it was somewhat safer when it was blue than when it was red. When the sea was red, there were likely monsters roaming in it looking to kill any humans they came across, but when it was blue, only the water was very deadly. Of course, safe behind the shields of a ship like the Skidbladnir, as Ulrich, Odd, Yumi, and Aelita currently were, the Digital Sea was like the open road – easy for travel and only potentially murderous.

None of the Lyoko Warriors, save Aelita, were doing much of anything at the moment. Aelita was, of course, busy driving the Skid back to Lyoko. Yumi was sitting sideways her seat, flicking her fan open and closed in a bored manner. Ulrich was leaning back, drumming his fingers on his armrest. Odd looked slightly more alive than the others – he was sitting forward and scanning the area outside his windshield, grinning deviously.

"Okay, I spy with my little eye…" He tapped his claw against his chin. "Something…blue!"

"It's the wall," Ulrich's voice deadpanned back to him through the Skid's speaker system.

"Okay, then I'll have another turn." Odd tapped his NavSkid's interface this time. "I spy-"

"It's the _wall_," Ulrich repeated, annoyance not even bothering to creep into his voice. "We've been through this a hundred times, Odd-"

"Actually, you've only had five rounds," Yumi corrected. The _flick _of her fan was audible behind her voice.

"Same difference," Ulrich said. "All that's here is walls. Don't you have anything better to not do?"

"If I did, I wouldn't be playing I Spy, would I?" Odd flopped back in his seat, whining under his breath. "Jeremie, are we there yet?"

"I don't know," Jeremie's voice cut in from out of nowhere as usual, layered with cheerful sarcasm. "Do you see anything that looks like Lyoko?"

"How should I know? All of the balls look the same to me!" Odd shrugged in his seat. "Why did that Replika have to be so far away?"

"What, didn't you know? XANA put it there just to spite you." Even though Odd couldn't see Aelita, he could practically hear the jeering smile he knew she had. "It's not so much that it was far away. There weren't any network access points nearby…"

"Don't you have a ship to drive, Princess?"

"I can drive and make sarcastic comments at the same time. It's one of my many special skills."

"I don't know about that, Aelita," Ulrich cut in, sounding slightly more amused than he had before. "Can you _spy_ things like Odd can?"

"Settle down, guys," Jeremie interrupted, just before things could get any more involved. "I know we've all had a long day, but it'll just be a few more minutes."

"It'd better be," Odd said. "I'm bored stiff! And I thought I was going to get a little beauty sleep tonight…" He closed his eyes and shook his head, but he couldn't get to sleep if he tried. Voluntary sleep was impossible on Lyoko, though unconsciousness was negotiable.

"Odd, it's only…what, eight?" Ulrich said, grinning from ear to ear. "What's the rush? Are you going to be up all night with girlfriend number…what is it now? Sixty-four? Sixty-five?"

"_Thirty-seven,_" Odd said, his voice suddenly edgy. Ulrich responded with a low whistle.

"Already?" Yumi said, finally interested in the conversation at hand. "Who is it this time? Eighth grader? Seventh grader?"

"Uh…"

"At least tell us you know her name," Jeremie insisted.

"Why is it any of your business?" Odd retorted, trying his best to keep his tone light.

"You don't know her name, do you?" Ulrich was holding back giggles the entire time he was talking. "You might want to start having conversations with these girls before you let them suck…your face."

He burst into laughter, and Jeremie and Yumi couldn't help but follow suit. A small "Uh…" could be heard from Aelita in their midst. Odd folded his arms and shook his head again. "I do know her name, alright? I'm not that much of a floozy! I just don't see why you have to know if you're just going to make fun of –"

"But you admit you're a floozy." Ulrich wasn't going to let the topic die.

"I believe the term you're looking for is "Casanova," good buddy."

"I don't think that's what you said, Odd."

"But it's what I said _later_, Yumi. So it's more truer."

"Yep, that's right. A guy can date as many girls as he wants and get all the praise in the world for it. Nothing unfair about that, not at all…"

"Says the girl who hasn't had her first kiss!" The Skid's cabin grew deadly quiet.

"…_Shut up_, Odd!"

"You haven't?"

"Why, do you have anything you want to tell us?"

"Wait, you have?"

"No, what-?"

"Wait, who's doing what to who now?"

"Guys, honestly! It's nothing, Aelita," Jeremie said, hardly hiding the fluster in his voice. "Boys will be boys, and…" He paused for a second, and then went on with a vastly different tone of voice. "Uh oh…!"

"Huh? Jeremie, what is i-" Ulrich didn't have to finish his sentence – before he was done, the Digital Sea faded from blue to red. The tone of the conversation switched immediately from taunting to professional. "Oh. Now I see."

"Yeah. Speaking of boys, we've got fancy-pants at ten o' clock!"

The Skid swiveled to the left. Sure enough, the Rorkal, a smaller, spiny Navskid expy, was rushing toward the Skid at top speed. None of the Lyoko Warriors could see through its windshield at that distance, but they all knew who was inside.

"William? Really? That's the last thing we need right now." Yumi shook her head.

"I'll say!" Odd whined, looking out the top of his Navskid at the oncoming ship. "Now we'll never get home."

"Not if we let him have his way, anyway," Jeremie replied, clacking keys. "He doesn't seem to have any monsters with him. It's just another attempt to waste our energy reserves. And maybe kill us, if he's lucky."

"In that tiny ship?" Ulrich snorted. "What does he think he's going to do, ram us?"

"…Probably. Aelita, do you think we can outrun him?"

"In the Navskids, maybe…" Aelita pushed a few buttons on her console with one hand, and put the other on the Navskid release levers. "But the main body? Probably not. Should we attack him?"

"He's not gonna stand around."

"I'll take that as a yes. Navskids deployed…" Aelita pressed down three of the four levers in front of her. "Listen, you guys hold William off while I get closer to Lyoko. You can rejoin me when you're done, so…finish this quick!"

"You don't have to tell me twice!" Odd shouted back. With small clicks, Yumi, Ulrich, and Odd's Navskids detatched from the main Skid. The main Skid sped off one way, away from William and toward Lyoko, while Ulrich, Odd, and Yumi sped to join William. They surrounded the Rorkal in a circle, following it as it sped ahead.

"Unwelcome as usual, aren't we?" Ulrich jeered, even though he knew William couldn't hear him, much less understand him. "Torpedoes –"

Odd fired his before he'd even finished saying the command. At first sight of the torpedoes, the Rorkal dropped out of sight, sending the weapons spiraling toward Yumi, who ducked under and out of the way just in time.

"Great!" Odd shouted. "Now I've wasted my weapons!"

"That's not the only thing we've wasted," Yumi said. "Look up!"

The boys followed her command, and each winced as they saw. In the time that the Navskids had wasted on William, three Rekin had crept out from behind walls further ahead, and were now pursuing the main body of the Skid.

"Wait- Aelita, watch out!" Jeremie's voice called just in time. "Three Rekin have just appeared! They're chasing after the Skid!"

"Oh, just what we needed," Aelita said so all the Navskids could hear. "I don't think I can maneuver this to –"

"I'll be right there," Ulrich cut in. "Yumi, keep William occupied. I'll go back and help Aelita."

"Sounds good, just fine, perfect," Yumi said, a little too fast.

"What about me?" Odd whined. "I'm useless!"

"Yes you are," Yumi replied with a smile. "Head back with Ulrich and distract a shark or two."

"Wait, so I'm shark bait?"

"Shark bait, un ha ha."

"Oh, it's a choice between sharks and your jokes? I think I'll take the sharks." Ulrich and Odd sped away. Yumi realigned her ship to look down where William had fallen, just in time to see one of his torpedoes rocketing up in her direction.

"Everything always attacks me!" she shouted to herself as she dodged them. The Rorkal rocketed up after the rockets, stopped, and swiveled to lock on Yumi. At this distance, she could see William grinning at her through the glass of the ship – but she couldn't see the faint Eye of XANA that she knew was on his forehead.

"What, what do you want?" she deadpanned, again as if William could hear. William only laughed. Yumi fired her torpedoes while he was distracted. One missed, while the other hit the side of the Rorkal's body, sending it spiraling away from Yumi. Without a moment to lose, she chased after him. If she could just get him to waste his last torpedo, she knew, he'd disappear.

"Stupid sharks! Follow the bait already!" Odd's voice crackled in from the other battle. Yumi tuned them all out – that wasn't her fight. She reached the Rorkal just as it oriented itself – and predictably, it sped off in the other direction. Yumi chased the ship through two corridors until she realized this was its plan – lead her on a chase until she was too far away to reach the main Skid again. She had to end the battle quickly. Putting on an extra burst of speed – above that of the damaged Rorkal – she swerved to sit in front of the ship's mirror again.

The two windshields slid against each other. Yumi could see the whites of William's eyes – and their Eye of XANA pupils. The sight filled her with unimaginable rage.

"Well?" she shouted through the glass. "Hit me!"

Yumi's Navskid rocketed backward as William's second torpedo hit its side. Now frantic, she dropped out of the Rorkal's range, turned around, and tried to navigate her way back to the main fight. "William's out of ammo!" she shouted to the others. "I'm heading back. How are you guys?"

"We're waiting at the entrance to Lyoko," Aelita said. "Two Rekin are gone. I hit them both –"

"We both hit one of them, Aelita –"

"You wish. We're still waiting on Odd with the third."

"Okay, I'll – oh, no he isn't!" A beep on Yumi's radar told her what she had feared – the Rorkal was following her again. "Jeremie, I think you were right about the ramming."

"Yumi, I'm right about everything. Can you shake him?"

"Once I get back to the Skid, I can."

"Hurry! Your Navskid's almost out of power!"

With another burst of speed, the main body of the Skid came into sight, sitting just outside a giant sphere – Lyoko. Ulrich and the empty Navskid were attached to it, while Odd was doing a loop-de-loop pattern with the third Rekin, which was firing at him without success.

"Finally!" Odd shouted, speeding away from the still-looping Rekin. "Me and my partner over there were getting kinda dizzy."

Yumi just "humphed" back. The two of them reattatched to the main body, which sped into the entrance to Lyoko before the Rekin could realize it had a mission. With all the whoops and hollers of a job well done, Aelita burst the surface of the Digital Sea, realigned the Skid, and maneuvered the ship back to its hangar in Sector 5.

Looking over, Yumi couldn't help but notice that she was parked right next to the empty Navskid. She tried not to stare at it too much.

* * *

"Woo!" Odd hollered, slapping hands with Ulrich as he walked past him. "Did you see us out there? We got to teach fancy-pants a lesson two times in one night! I think that's a record!" He sauntered past Aelita, who was sitting on the holomap console with Yumi, and gave her a high five. "Ah, I love my life. Jeremie, can you say goodnight already?" He held his hand up for Yumi. She gave it a bit of a push.

"Just a little more, Odd…there!" Jeremie turned the monitor off, spun around, and stumbled out of his chair. "Great work, guys. Another Replika cleared, another step closer to beating XANA…"

"One small step for a Warrior…" Yumi mumbled.

"One giant step for mankind," Jeremie finished in a chastising tone. "And Odd, don't say my nicknames like they were your idea."

"But most of them are my idea. Don't get your kangaroos in a twist, Jeremie. I respect your creativity, however little of it there is." Ulrich and Aelita giggled. Aelita tried to give a glum-looking Yumi a smile, which she returned with hardly any enthusiasm.

"Ha ha. Didn't you say you had a date? Or sleep? Or a date with sleeping involved?" Jeremie walked toward the elevator, and the rest followed him. Ulrich could hardly hold in his laughter.

"Can we not start this again?" The elevator closed, moved up a story, and then opened out onto a dark factory and, as they all could see as they moved closer to the ropes, a near-cloudless night, more full of stars than it had been all spring.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Aelita said to Yumi, in another self-righteous attempt to cheer her. "I always liked seeing the stars. They always remind me that I'm home."

"Oh…yes." This time, the smile was real. As Aelita climbed up her rope, Yumi turned to Ulrich, who was only partway up his. "Beautiful, right?"

"What? Uh…" Ulrich slipped a bit, and then looked up. "Oh. Yeah…" He smiled back. "Yeah, they are."

Yumi smiled back up at him, but frowned as he turned away. When they all reached the top, they walked off across the bridge. Odd bounded to the manhole and jumped down. Ulrich walked off after him, shaking his head. Jeremie and Aelita held hands together, walking just a little bit behind Yumi, who was setting a bit of a slow pace. Aelita gave Yumi a bit of a worried look. "Uh, Jeremie…"

"Go ahead. It's not like Ulrich will talk to her anytime soon." He smiled at her. She gave him a kiss on the cheek, and then walked up to join Yumi.

"Anything you want to talk about?" she said.

"Anything you'd care to ask," Yumi mumbled back.

"I don't know what to ask about," Aelita replied, confused. "Is it what Odd said? You know not to take him seriously…"

"Not really." Yumi didn't look up at Aelita once. "I just don't know how much longer I can keep a straight face about this."

"About…?"

"Everything. Everything we're responsible for."

"You mean-"

"I'm trying to be general. I just – I don't know how we can keep smiling even when we're looking our own failures in the eye."

Aelita was silent for a long time. The two of them stopped two-thirds of the way to the manhole. "Well…I think we're just trying to stay hopeful. We want to think that we can solve everything that's in front of us. We know how to defeat all the monsters, and we've got every means to destroy the Replikas and free William and find…"

"But what if we can't?"

Even Aelita's smile faltered a little. "We can't win if we don't try," she mumbled meaninglessly. Then, she went on in a stronger voice. "Hope may seem like a silly thing at the worst of times, but…I don't know. It keeps me sane. I mean…" She paused. "Sometimes, it seems like seeing my father again is impossible. But then I remember…I'm a Lyoko Warrior. And that's what a Lyoko Warrior does. They do the impossible."

Yumi was silent for a time, as if she didn't know how to respond. When she did, it was hardly expected. "Uh, Jeremie?"

Jeremie had wormed his way between the girls, looking very confused. He was holding Aelita's hand again. "Uh…am I interrupting something?"

"Yes," Yumi said without hesitation.

"Well, Ulrich and Odd are probably waiting for us, and I didn't want to leave you guys behind…"

Aelita's smile returned to her face. "Then we won't keep you waiting! Come on, Yumi. I think we all need some sleep."

"Yeah, sleep," Yumi said, almost dreamily. She was the last one in line, and watched the others disappear down the manhole. "The best way to forget things."

* * *

Cryptic is cryptic indeed! Anyway, be sure to read the next chapter. If I'm right, it should be up in a few if it isn't already. Buh bye! Here's hoping I stick with this!

- Carth


	2. Interlude

**Interlude**

It was a silent night in Bolougne-Billancourt.

This was not wholly unusual. Much the area's active nightlife was in Paris, and very few other businesses of repute remained open at 3:30 on a Wednesday morning. The shops were silent, the skyscrapers were dark, and there was no visible movement anywhere anyone lived – whether in apartments or secondary school dormitories. The loudest noises in the town had to be the sleeping citizens' snores – or in the sleeping citizens' dreams.

The last place anyone expected to see any activity, day or night, was the abandoned Renault factory. No one even expected the eyesore of the Seine to be torn down. But, on this silent night of all nights, deep in the bowels of the old, dark factory, a supercomputer's interface monitor flickered to life.

A progress bar worked its way across the screen and vanished. Multiple displays flew up from nowhere, along with a dialog box full of letters and numbers. The lines of text rushed across the screen in a torrent for almost an hour before the box was closed. Almost instantly, another box took its place. This one was rather different – it contained seven smaller, card-shaped boxes. Each card had a small, square picture, a name, and a number - a bare minimum of information.

The first card held no data at all – it was greyed out, and a large question mark was pasted over the picture area. The next five cards were all blue, and had the names and pictures of all the Lyoko Warriors. The second card had a picture of Aelita. The third, Odd. The fourth, Ulrich. The fifth, Yumi. The sixth, Jeremie. The seventh card had a face as well, William, but his card was bright yellow rather than blue.

The computer beeped twice quickly, and another progress bar sped past. The first card lit up, turned bright red, and began pulsating, accompanied by soft, rhythmic beeps. This went on for about ten minutes before a loud, angry beep signaled that the program had given up. The card went dark again, darker than it had been before, and the second card lit up in its place. This one only glowed for five seconds before another dialog box opened up over the screen. Twenty-five seconds later, there were six dialog boxes on the screen – five blue, one yellow – and the card box was gone.

All six of the boxes were full of strings of code – sequences of seemingly meaningless letters, numbers, and even a few characters that weren't on the supercomputer's keyboard at all. One box's lines were entirely vertical, while another one was arranged in spirals. The five blue boxes scrolled though all this information at top speed, going forwards and backwards and around in circles, sometimes highlighting whole sections at random intervals. The yellow box remained still, but did not close.

Then, just as suddenly as they had appeared, the boxes vanished. The computer was still working, but its processes were hidden to the eyes of the interface. In another dimension, a tower turned from white to red. A floor below the computer's interface, three scanners flew open.

And the abandoned factory was alight with noise.


	3. Perception Filtre

Well, what do you know? I DID write the next chapter! This one's a bit of a lead-in as well, but some weirdness should be popping up soon. Or maybe I'm just stalling even more. It's all up to you! And many sweet, sweet thanks to the people who reviewed! Because if there's anything I write this for, it's my own health! Just kidding. I love this story.

* * *

**Chapter Two**  
Perception Filtre

_Kadic Academy Cafeteria  
7:30 AM_

It was a lousy day at Kadic Academy. The starry sky had given way to clouds at about 5:30, and a pungent spring rain was falling just hard enough to soak anyone that went outside. Unfortunately, much of a Kadic student's routine involved going outside, so the cafeteria trailer was full of wet, smelly teenagers eating wet, smelly food.

First in line was William's clone, who was twice as wet as anyone else. He stood silent for a whole minute while Rosa asked him what he wanted, and finally set the whole line laughing with rage when he said he didn't want to make such difficult decisions – he wanted to go out and play in the "sky water" some more. He finally walked to an empty table, stumbling and humming on his way there. Ulrich, Odd, Jeremie, and Aelita, who were sitting two tables over, entirely failed to notice him – they were far too busy torturing each other.

"Well…I can't go all day without asking," Aelita said curiously to Odd, who was piling ketchup on his scrambled eggs. "How was your date? Or sleep? Or…date with sleeping involved?" Ulrich laughed again, and Jeremie beamed with pride at his own creativity.

"Fine," Odd said, though it sounded more like "Fhnn," as he had thoughtfully filled his mouth with scrambled eggs while Aelita had been talking. Not only did this muffle his speech, it also disguised his facial expression.

"Ready to tell us her name?" Jeremie picked up. Odd made a loud, meaningless noise in reply. Jeremie's facial expression did not change. "That's not a very common name. Is it Basque?"

"Wait, you're dating Goizañe Ramos?" Ulrich said, with a far-too-large smile on his face. "Odd, that's sick! She's ten years old!"

"Nhhhh!" Odd swallowed his scrambled eggs in a lump, and took a breath before talking back. "Guys, I'm trying to eat!"

"Did it not go well?" Aelita said. She was the only one at the table that sounded worried – Jeremie and Ulrich, who lived in closer proximity to Odd, were still sniggering.

Odd winced, trying to make a decision, and then put down his fork. "Guys," he said, putting on an air of a professor, "Do you know the difference between me and all of you?"

"We're not spazzes?" Ulrich joked.

Odd went on, ignoring him. "I don't let my _personal_ life affect my _social_ life. See, sometimes I hang out with you guys and save the world on Lyoko, and sometimes I go out on dates with girls. Odd as a friend and Odd as a boyfriend don't get mixed together, and everyone is happy." He brightened as though he had never said anything, and gave a double thumbs-up.

His conviction was met with awkward looks; Jeremie in particular looked a little uncertain. Just as he opened his mouth, however, Ulrich stepped in. "You know what, that's true. The only time we ever find out that Odd's dated someone is when they come over and slap him after the breakup." He was grinning; he did not consider these relationships sacred enough not to make fun of them.

"But what about Brynja?" Aelita said, trying to get in on the snarkier side of the conversation. "You brought her to the supercomputer…"

"Brinchit who?" Odd said with a dead serious look. Jeremie and Ulrich looked similarly confused. "Never mind. The bottom line is, whatever I do when you're not looking never has to reach this table if I don't want it to, and maybe if I want to pretend a certain night never happened…wait, you know what? 'I'd rather not talk about it'! There, you can't make me say anything else! Here, have some ketchup, it goes good on cardboard." He offered the ketchup bottle to Ulrich, who was only fazed for about three seconds.

"It didn't go well, did it?" Odd didn't even bother to talk to him through the scrambled eggs he'd re-stuffed himself with. Ulrich shrugged. "Figures. If it had we would've heard every detail by now," he muttered into his cup.

Jeremie and Aelita gave short, awkward laughs. Aelita happened to look up as a group of girls made their way past the table. One of them, a girl she recognized but did not know the name of, looked back at their table, careful not to look Aelita in the eye. She mouthed a few words while making a very rude gesture at the back of Odd's head. Aelita's eyes narrowed. She looked down at her own hand, and repeated the gesture curiously on the table. No one else saw either event.

A smirk worked its way across Odd's face. He swallowed loudly and turned to look Ulrich in the eye. "Hey, just because I don't wear my heart on my sleeve like you do –"

"For someone that didn't want to talk you're really stretching this conversation," Ulrich said quickly, as if it would stop the table from seeing his blush.

"I'm just saying, for a guy that can't spit it out you do an awful lot of talking…"

"Odd, I'm done. I'm trying to eat."

"Did you know he pours his soul out to my bedpost almost every night?" Odd said, now turned to Jeremie and Aelita. The two of them exchanged awkward grins – this, they knew, was Odd's revenge.

"Odd, I'm sorry, okay? I was joking-!" Ulrich's tone was growing darker with every word.

"Just last night I came back and there he was, all long-faced and pouty, and I knew what was coming –"

"He's exaggerating-!"

"_Oh, I just don't know if Yumi_ likes _me!_" Odd trilled in falsetto – an achievement for his voice. "_Do you really think she's kissed anyone else? Does the cheek count? What if she's kissed William and I don't-_"

Jeremie and Aelita's smiles had already faded – even before Odd started imitating Ulrich they knew he'd gone too far. In the span of four sentences Ulrich had gone from stern to murderous – his entire face was flushed red, and his lips were straining as if holding back a torrent of abuse. This wasn't what cut Odd off, however – that was taken care of by a brand new visitor entirely.

"Wow, I don't believe it! More than two people actually_ like_ Yumi?" Odd felt a hand brush him and twitched in shock. Sissi was standing next to him, holding her lunch in one hand, his shoulder in another, and a triumphant, malicious grin on her face. Nicolas and Herb were several feet behind but still present, echoing her grin with varying degrees of success.

"Oh for – Sissi! Could you leave us alone for one day?" Aelita glared at her with dislike. She wasn't the only one – Ulrich, if possible, looked even madder, but seemed to be locked in an inner struggle as to who to lash. Odd was at a loss for words – he never wanted to talk before he had come up with a perfect comeback.

Only Jeremie kept his head long enough to talk. "Sissi, this is a private conversation–"

"I know, that's why I could hear it from across the room." She cast Ulrich an obvious glance, and then made a show of kneeling down to Odd's level. "Anyway, this is an interesting development! I never expected that from you, Odd. I thought you only dated pretty, empty-headed girls."

"Yeah, that's right, and from the look of things, I missed one!" Odd snapped quickly, grinning. "I mean, everyone knows you're pretty empty-headed!"

He started the laughter, and soon Jeremie and Aelita joined in. Ulrich gave a chuckle before he realized that he was supposed to be mad and withdrew again. Herb and Nicholas even laughed a little. When they realized that Sissi hadn't tried to stop them, they laughed harder.

"What – stop it! Stop, all of you!" She looked angrily at every one of them, as if the abuse was their fault. Halfway through, she realized that she could still hear laughter, and whirled around, surprised. Herb and Nicholas shut up immediately. "What do you two think you're doing here?"

"Uh…" Herb started, and then gave up.

Nicholas took over. "We're your moral support!"

"I don't need 'moral support'! You two dumbbells already know I'm right about everything, so take my advice and get lost!" They nodded, and she turned back to the table without making sure that they had left – which they hadn't. Her eyes went right to the taciturn Ulrich, who did not look back. She sauntered over to the empty seat next to him, and placed her tray down. "Ulrich, why so down in the dumps? Are these three sourpusses bothering you?"

Ulrich didn't answer. Jeremie acted a little faster – he jumped up from his seat and started over to Ulrich's side. "Sissi, you're only making it worse –"

"Hands off, Jeremie, you're invading my Ulrich-only bubble," Sissi said, holding a finger to his face before turning back to Ulrich. "You know, Ulrich, I may as well say it – Yumi isn't much of a prize to lose. Odd may as well take her. I've said it before and I'll say it again – I'm here whenever you need me…"

Aelita and Odd were up at this point – at any signal, they were ready to intervene. Ulrich was the only thing holding the tension together. Slowly, he turned to actually look at Sissi, and gave her the ugliest look he could muster. Her smile faltered at the sight.

"Sissi," he began, calmer than his face would suggest, "Do you have anything better to do than insult my friends?"

Sissi had clearly been expecting a more straightforward insult – and she might've known how to respond to one. She opened her mouth to sputter a bit – "Well, I, uh…what do you know? I…" – but it came to no practical end, so she closed it again. She stood up, took her lunch, and walked away with a humph.

The table was silent for a good long time. No one even ate. Ulrich, determined not to look at anyone, stared out the window. William's clone, who had finished his lunch ten minutes earlier, was alone in the middle of the Quad. He didn't seem to mind the rain – in fact, he was running around in circles in it, arms spread wide to catch the wind. Sometimes he stopped to do a dance, splash in a puddle, or marvel at the droplets falling on his sodden jacket. All of the other window tables had noticed him – they stared as if hypnotized, pointing and murmuring.

"Uh…" Odd said, turning to Ulrich, "That was a good one. You stumped her dead!" Ulrich grunted in response. Amazingly, Odd looked confused. "Uh, buddy?"

"I wouldn't expect him to say anything," Aelita said in an undertone. "You know he's sensitive about Yumi."

"Well, yeah, but I figured he could take a joke!"

"Some people can't brush off their emotions as easily as you think. Yumi, too," she went on. "I know you're…upset, but that doesn't mean you can take it out on them-"

"I'm not _upset_," he said, treating the word like a disease. "It's the rain. I hate the rain," he finally said. "It makes everyone a lot harder to deal with."

"Not him," Jeremie said. "He looks pretty happy." He looked out at the clone. A younger student had come to watch him out of curiosity, and had been swept up into some sort of dance. They were both soaked – soaked and smiling.

**Anger, abuse, and anguish, again and again and again. Is it always like this in your world, Jeremie? If I had known, I never would have let you leave my sight. **

Jeremie started, then did a double take back at Aelita. He wasn't sure he'd heard that right. "Huh – what?"

Aelita looked calm, but slightly surprised. She raised an eyebrow. "Isn't that right?"

"What…I mean, no, what did you just say?"

"I said he'd catch a cold out there if he wasn't a computer program. Why?" She stared right past Jeremie's blank face. "Oh, guys! Yumi's here!"

"Yumi!" Odd, now sounding a little brighter, looked up at the window. Sure enough, Yumi was walking across the Quad toward the clone, who had gathered something of a crowd. She shook her head, grabbed his hand, and started pulling him back toward the cafeteria. "Can't we meet her in here?"

The bell rang as he spoke, and the whole room groaned. "You have to get wet sometime," Jeremie said, stating the obvious. Without much conversation, the four of them picked up their things and joined the throng, which was not rushing at all to get outside. Ulrich was last – he took a long, lingering look at Yumi before losing his place in line.

* * *

_10__th__ Grade History Classroom  
10:30_

"Yumi, look!" William's clone said, with a grin a mile wide. "I'm wet!"

"That's nice," Yumi said in an undertone for the seventh time. No, the sixth. The first time, two periods ago, she had to remind him that the term for being covered in rain was "wet", not "full of sky water." He had taken to the new word like he had to no other before it – it was almost the only thing he'd said all period. Twice Yumi had had to put his hand down to stop him from announcing it to Mr. Fumet. Handling the clone was always a full-time job, but it was far harder on rainy days than not.

And then, she thought, her mind wandering away from the clone and the lesson, handling her friends was just as hard, with or without Lyoko. They had been oddly silent when they met her in the rain – but one thing they had talked about had been their run-in with Sissi at breakfast, and that was enough to leave them in an excusable bad mood all morning. Deep down, she wasn't sure whether she had wanted to be there or not. While she was happy to avoid any kind of interaction with Sissi, Yumi found herself thinking that they hadn't been hard enough on her. She just _knew _she would've stepped in the second she had started harassing Ulrich. Or even Odd – but probably Ulrich.

_[Do you hear it?]_

_[Hear what?]_

_[The echoes of words that no one can hear, but only see.]_

_[Ah. Thinking. Too easy.] _

Yumi started, pausing her train of thought for just a second, but then went on, scratching at her paper with her pencil. Ulrich hadn't talked to her at all that morning. She'd gotten used to that by now – some days he'd be friendly but distant, other days cold as stone. This was a stone day. A stern day. Ulrich Stern, with the stern eyes. They didn't look right in his face. It was a face that looked so much better when it was smiling, or even flushed with sweet embarrassment. Not when it was so sad…or angry. She couldn't tell sad from angry, and she was too afraid to guess wrong to guess at all. She should've said something, but she was too afraid. She'd faced death a thousand times and she was more afraid of a fourteen-year-old boy.

If Sissi ever tried to touch him again she'd make her regret it. Oh yes, yes she'd regret it. And then maybe, just maybe…

_[Then this: Everything in a man's world stored in a man's box.]_

_[The same.]_

_[No, that is memory. Look, her face is changing. See! How twisted.]_

The spark was gone. She was all ready to change everything right that second, and then the motivation was gone.

"Yumi, look, I'm wet!"

"Thasnice," she said hurriedly, giving the clone a glance. "Now, be quiet…"

"But I'm not quiet," the clone insisted a shade louder. "I'm William. No…I'm wet. I'm wet…but I'm William. I'm William…but I'm wet. I'm wet, but…I'm…" He gave up. "Yumi, look, I'm full of sky water!"

He was smiling wide, but none of it reached his eyes. There were no real thoughts or feelings there – only basic senses and program logic. Just yesterday, she'd seen death in those same eyes…and then, even further back, there might have been something else, an actual human mind. She wasn't sure just how much of that mind she missed – he scared and excited her, even now – but she couldn't bear the thought of it being gone. William gone. Franz Hopper gone. XANA torturing everyone else he could. And here everyone was, pretending not to be distressed. And Sissi, thinking she was so important, so terrible…

"_I'm a Lyoko Warrior. And that's what a Lyoko Warrior does. They do the impossible."_ Aelita was right, but maybe not in the way she thought. Lyoko and the monsters were simple enough to handle, but the psychological effects were the worst of all. She wished the monsters were the only things she had to fight. Comparatively, she liked them more. They didn't have a face to look into and reason with and remember and disappoint. If Sissi ever tried to touch him again she'd make her regret it.

_[But how can a face be changed, and stay so beautiful?]_

Two faces blended together in her mind. She shook her head to push them away – no, that was the last thing she wanted to think about…

_[The answer is simple: confusion and pain, disjointed thought.]_

_[No, Brother. The answer is us.]_

"What?" Yumi turned to the clone, confused – even more so once she realized that not only had the clone not spoken, but he was crying. There were no tears on his cheeks – his program was not quite that complex – but he was definitely, and loudly, upset. "Uh…are you okay?"

The clone sniffled and looked up at her, not at all blotchy-faced. "I'm not wet anymore," he said entirely too loudly. "I want to go outside again."

On the clone's left side, Matthias Burel choked with laughter. Yumi glared at him, which he brushed off with an apologetic wave. Mr. Fumet spotted them both, but before he could even begin an accusatory name drop, the bell rang. The clone gave a screech like an over-stimulated child, jumped out of his seat, and raced out the door. Yumi jumped up to call after him, but it was too late. By the time everyone was done laughing at him, he was back outside, rolling in the mud.

_[Did she hear us? Did she really hear us?]_

Eventually everyone forgot him and started for the door, chattering casually. Yumi sighed, shook her head, and closed her empty notebook. She had to go collect the clone before –

_[She always hears us, Brother. Just never with her ears.]_

Yumi stopped, and turned around. "Uh…hello?"

She may as well have been talking to a wall, though she was in fact talking to several empty desks. She looked around, but nothing about the scene changed. She could have sworn that she'd heard two voices…

_[Do we take her now?]_

But, thinking again, they had probably only been in her head. She shook her head, and left the room with the rest of her class. Mr. Fumet followed after her; he turned the light off as he left, leaving the classroom dark.

_[No. We wait. She learns now, and she will learn later.]_

* * *

_Science Building  
1:30_

Ulrich looked down at the white paper in front of him in horror.

In terms of mortal danger, it wasn't anything to be afraid of. It was 8.5x11, stapled at the top to another sheet, and covered in black ink shaped into words and letters. Of course, it also happened to be labeled "SCIENCE TEST," but middle-school science tests have almost never been known to kill.

"I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead," Odd repeated over and over to himself. With forty clueless minutes to kill, Ulrich stared at Odd's breakdown out of the corner of his eye. It was always entertaining to watch in a pinch, if not helpful at all for the test. First, he looked around wildly, trying to focus on anything but the paper. Eventually, he came to accept that the paper existed, but continued to deny that it was a test by doodling pictures of Kiwi all over it. Once in a while he would look up and look around, further reminding both of them that Jeremie and Aelita were across the room and thus not available to save them.

_Hey, Ulrich, _he scrawled suddenly on the side of his paper. _Do you remember what the magnitude of a nanometer is?_

_No, _he wrote tersely. He wasn't lying, but he also didn't feel like talking yet. Difficulty was never something he liked to share with others – and especially not now, not to Odd.

_Didn't care anyway, _Odd scrawled back on one of the answer lines. Ulrich glanced at the paper, but didn't answer. They each glanced through their tests, filling in easy answers where they could, but both ended up staring back at half-empty sheets full of half-assed chemistry.

_It's just one test, _Odd wrote, hopefully. Then, a glance later, _Hey, I didn't study either. We're failing buddies! _

_I didn't even know there was a test, _Ulrich finally wrote.

_Same difference. _He turned away from Ulrich, wrote one answer (which, as Ulrich could clearly see, was "Here it is"), and then looked back. His eyebrows flew up. He erased all the lines he'd written before, and in their place, did a small doodle. It was a cartoonish caricature of Yumi, winking and blowing a kiss. _Don't worry about it! _was written next to her in a word balloon.

Ulrich looked unsure whether to smile or not, but he did feel a strange, warm feeling that did nothing for his concentration. He looked up at the clock, which helpfully reminded him that he only had twenty minutes left to live, and then looked back out the window to forget about it. The outside was hardly as deadly as the test – all that was out there was the rain, the grounds, and the man.

The man? Ulrich did a double take, but the man was gone. He arched an eyebrow – there was no way the man could have walked away that fast. He could only just remember his appearance. He was pretty sure he'd been in a suit, but couldn't remember anything about his face. Eventually he decided it didn't matter and went back to staring at his test. Yumi's caricature winked up at him from Odd's paper.

"I wish I didn't have to worry," Ulrich said in an undertone, smiling at the picture. He looked back at his own paper, and then had a flash of inspiration. _1 nanometer = 1x10 ^-9 m!_

_Cool! Remember anything else?_

_Nope…_

_

* * *

__Rec Room Awning  
3:05_

The rain got heavier as the afternoon wore on. At three o' clock, when classes ended, all the day students rushed out the school gate to waiting cars, while all the boarding students rushed into the Rec Room to jostle for a place at the foosball table. With over a hundred boarders and one foosball table, however, most of the kids did nothing but make crowds. No one could get into the Rec Room, and no one could get out without much bodily contact.

Jeremie and Aelita, being the smart ones, waited outside in the awning for their friends to meet them. Odd and Ulrich had been called into a meeting with Jim and Ms. Hertz about the "incriminating marks" on the sides of their Science tests, while Yumi was in the library, picking up an extra set of books for the two research papers that had to be written – one for her, and one for the clone. For the moment, Jeremie and Aelita had all the time in the world and nothing to spend it on but each other. Fortunately, this was their favorite way to spend time in the first place.

"Brrrr…" Aelita shivered, huddling against the side of the building. "I thought winter was over already…"

"It always depends," Jeremie said, both concerned and informative. "You know what they say about March – 'in like a lion, out like a lamb'. You'll see; in a few weeks, it'll be warmer."

"Yes, maybe," Aelita replied. "I'll try to remember that." She smiled, but still hunched her shoulders closer to her neck. Jeremie found himself reminded of the first time he saw her shiver, on the first night he saw her in person. With that memory fresh in his mind, something inside him was stirred to action. "Um, here…you don't have to wait so long." With some hesitation, he inched closer to her and put his hand around her shoulder. "See?"

**I never knew your hands were like heaven.**

"Um…" Jeremie leaped back and blushed beet red – he had no idea how to respond to such a flowery compliment. "Th-thank…you?"

To his surprise, Aelita looked more bemused than grateful. "You're welcome, I guess…" Her voice dissolved into giggles. "You're so funny sometimes, Jeremie."

"Yeah, yeah, I can…be funny sometimes," he said awkwardly. He kept eye contact for just a little longer than usual, looking the slightest bit suspicious of the conversation he had just had. It wasn't the first time that day that Aelita had reacted oddly to something he'd said – he just couldn't figure out what the problem was.

Aelita did not catch on at all. "Don't look so surprised," she said, holding the hand he'd taken away. "Some days, you just say something out of the blue that's funnier than Odd could ever come up with."

Jeremie blushed a different way. "Are you making fun of me?"

**Never,** Aelita said with a big grin. "Oh, there they are! Ulrich! Yumi! Odd!"

The couple didn't have to wait long for their friends – they dashed under the awning as fast as they could. Odd had a copy of the Kadic News held over his head; Yumi had resorted to her bulging backpack, while Ulrich was just as soaked without the effort. Odd was the first one to arrive. He put down his newspaper, looked into the Rec Room, and swore. "Aww! There's no room?"

"Why are you complaining?" Ulrich said, running in after him with Yumi. "There doesn't look like there's any room for fun in there anyway. And that's why we're friends with the smart people." They waved at Jeremie and Aelita, who waved back.

"Did everything go well with Hertz and Jim?" Aelita said, concerned. "They didn't sound too happy about your tests…"

"Not in trouble," Ulrich said tersely. "Failed anyway."

"Oh, it took a while, but _I _managed to convince them that they were problem scratch work," Odd said, emphasizing the "I" heavily. "At least they didn't think we were cheating, right?"

"You might have gotten a good grade if you had cheated," Yumi deadpanned, trying her hardest only to look at Odd. She gave Ulrich a reassuring smile that died before Ulrich, who looked sullen again, had the chance to realize what was going on.

"Hey! I only study for things I think I can use for the future," Odd continued after the moment had run its course. "As long as chemistry keeps working, why do I need to know how it works?"

This set everyone laughing for a bit, even Ulrich, who had calmed down from at least one moping spell. Jeremie took the ensuing quiet to turn the subject in an all too common direction. "So, about Lyoko…after last night's victory Aelita and I were thinking we could get another Replika taken care of tonight…"

"So you go ahead and do that," Odd said. "I'm not running to the factory in this weather!"

"He has a point," Ulrich added. "We'll drown in the sewer, and the city's just as bad. If XANA's not attacking I'd really rather stay inside."

"Me neither, but I _do_ have a better excuse," Yumi said, checking inside her bag. "The History paper is due tomorrow, and it'll be hard enough writing one paper from scratch, let alone _two_." She gave Jeremie a look.

"I think the teachers already check to make sure I don't write anyone's papers," Jeremie said with an all-too-humble shrug. "Sorry."

"Fair enough. Either way, I gotta run." She did run, right back out into the rain. "See you guys tomorrow, if I'm still awake!"

"Bye," Ulrich said all too quietly. Once she was gone, he turned back to a nonplussed Jeremie. "So…you're not going to make us go to Lyoko without Yumi, right?"

"Oh, go do whatever," Jeremie said, shrugging. "We have plenty of work to do right here, anyway. Right, Aelita?"

**Please, Jeremie, can't we go home?**

Jeremie's eyes widened – was it just him, or did her mouth not match her words? "Uh, okay…just chill for a second. Anyway, you're welcome to join us…"

"Hmm…" Odd put a hand to his chin. "I think we're going to leave you two to do your smart people thing. Besides, I need to go air out Kiwi…" He turned to Ulrich. "Coming?"

"I don't like the sound of it… but as long as I'm dry and I can forget today, I'm good."

"Then what are we waiting for? To the Odd-cave!" Odd sprinted out into the rain with his newspaper over his head, heading for the dorms. Ulrich went after him just as quickly, followed by Jeremie and Aelita. Ulrich did a double take once during the journey, but otherwise they were all very focused on getting to their destination as quickly as possible.

* * *

_[Yumi.]_

"Yumi, look! I'm wet!"

"What – aaaaah!" William's clone grabbed Yumi's arms and swung her in a circle, much to the delight and terror of the sixth graders gathered in a circle around him. Yumi winced as mud splashed her bare ankle, but couldn't help but laugh a little – just a little – from the experience. But not very much.

"Okay guys, William…" She stepped away, holding her hands forward in surrender. "I really have to go now…do any of you know if Hiroki went home?"

"Uh…yeah, a long time ago," one girl said. "He said you were taking too long."

"Figures. Uh, bye_._" The sixth graders waved shyly – they were all plum terrified of her – but the clone jumped up and yelled enthusiastically until he couldn't see her anymore. She tried to ignore his voice ringing in his ears while she ran for the gate. She still held her bag up over her head, and tried not to focus on anything but getting home to get her work over with.

She was just passing the tool shed when she heard a shout – "Quick, Jim, everything's getting wet in here!" Her curiosity got the better of her immediately – she stopped and looked in the direction of the sound, and her jaw dropped open. The tool shed's largest window had a hole smashed in the right side, just large enough for a person to crawl through. Jim, standing on a comically tiny stepladder, was placing plywood over the hole. The door was open, and Yumi knew from the voice she had heard that Michel Roullier, the gardener and groundskeeper, was probably inside.

A few mumbles came from the inside of the shed before Roullier yelled an expletive. "I knew it – we've been robbed!"

"Robbed?" Jim wobbled a little on the ladder, jumped off, and ran through the door, leaving the project half-finished. "No wonder! So, what's missing? Power tools? Chainsaw? Lawnmower?"

_[Yumi.]_

"More like garden trowels and lead spikes," Roullier replied. "See that board? There used to be all those rusty old tools all over it. Look, they're all gone."

To Yumi's surprise, Jim laughed uproariously. "Well, look at that! We haven't just got a criminal, we've got a colossal idiot! Probably just grabbed what he could carry without looking once at it. There's no way anyone could sell rusty crap like that! I mean, if anything like that came into my hands when I was a scrap metal dealer, there's no way I would be able to –"

"You used to be a scrap metal dealer, Jim?"

Whether Jim ever elaborated on his past Yumi never knew; their voices dropped too low for her to hear the rest of the conversation. Her curiosity spent – and definitely not wasted on another one of Jim's careers – she walked on. Later on she would have to call Ulrich and Odd and ask if they'd heard about the break-in. Sure, it would be all over the campus by morning, but it would be a painless conversation topic.

_[Yumi…]_

_[Yumi…]_

A deadly silence seemed to fall on the campus. Yumi stopped in her tracks, turned around slowly, and raised an eyebrow at the scene before her. Nobody was there – just the trees, the road, and the silent shed. Satisfied that she had imagined whatever she had thought she had heard, she turned back around and continued on just a little more slowly.

_[She hears us now. Is it the time?]_

_[Patience. There are no commands now.]_

Yumi frowned and whirled around. "Aha!"

There was still no one there. But Yumi was sure now that she had heard voices – very distinct ones, at that. They had said something about a command; that was all that she could remember. They were familiar voices, too. One was more masculine, the other more feminine, and neither was immediately recognizable.

"Um…hello?" she said, with some hesitation, stepping backward. "Jim? Mr. Roullier?" Yumi was starting to get a little worried. She was lucky never to have heard disembodied voices before, but now was not a good time for them to start. She had no time to sleep them off – she had two papers to do. Determined more than ever to get home, she turned back around, but found that she somehow lacked the strength to move.

_[Wrong, the answer is wrong!]_

_[Look, the face, it's twisted again!]_

The voices were stronger now, and even if they weren't hallucinations, then they definitely weren't figments of her imagination. She turned around again, hands clenched into fists. "Who are you? Show yourself!" She was prepared for anything now – any attacker, human, XANA, or otherwise. Disembodied voices didn't scare a Lyoko Warrior.

_[Look, Brother, she wants to see us. Is this our command?]  
_

This voice, the feminine one, came from further away. Rather stupidly, Yumi ran away from the gate, toward the voice. "What are you talking about? What command?"

_[It is an offer. A challenge. The Challenge, the one that Cannot Be Refused.]_

"This isn't funny! Who are you! Stop – stop making me chase you!"

_[Then The Challenge is accepted. Now there is only for Yumi to Decide.]_

"What are you-" Before Yumi could say anything else in reply to this riddle, she felt something slimy twist around her leg. Instinctively, she looked down - and found herself too shocked to scream. A long, thin, and very real tendril, something like an octopus's tentacle, had wrapped itself tightly around her boot. Even as she watched, it was curling its way further up her leg.

The shock was gone – and now she screamed. Her bookbag fell and was forgotten; she grabbed the tendril with both hands to try and pry it off her boot. This was wholly unsuccessful – a fact that hit home when a second tentacle appeared in her line of sight and quickly wrapped itself around her wrists, tying them together. With a misaimed kick, she fell to the ground. Down there, she could see that the tendrils stretched far - very far - all the way back into the campus woods.

"Rrrgh…let me go! Let me go! Let me –" A third tentacle wrapped itself around her mouth, silencing her. She still punched and kicked against her bonds, but all to no avail. There was no way for her to escape – and the tentacles seemed to know this. Slowly, but gathering speed, they began pulling her across the sodden gravel. In time, they would pull her onto the grass, and then into the trees - and there was no way for her to escape.

* * *

For reference, this is what Aelita was saying when the MYSTERIOUS DISEMBODIED VOICE was dubbing her over:

**Anger, abuse, and anguish, again and again and again. Is it always like this in your world, Jeremie? If I had known, I never would have let you leave my sight. / **"He's never seen rain before, I think. At least as a computer program, he can't catch a cold. That would just ruin the fun."

**I never knew your hands were like heaven. **/ "You're right…that is a little better."

**Never. **/ "Always."

**Please, Jeremie, can't we go home? **/ "With you there's always work to do. Sure, why not?"

And, uh, thassit. Enjoy the plot, kids!


	4. The Gemini

I'd apologize for the delay, but I figure that sob stories just run off you guys by now. So, instead, I'll hope that the new chapter just speaks for itself – and speaks to you in deep and inspirational ways. Have fun.

Also, I noticed some errors in other chapters – there's an incomplete sentence in Chapter 2, and Odd and Ulrich are switched in the interlude (Odd was virtualized first, so his card should be first). That's fixed now.

* * *

**Chapter Three**  
The Gemini

Over grass, over gravel, past rocks and trees – the tendrils carried Yumi further and further away from the gate. As the journey continued, Yumi wasn't so much fearful of her destination as she was frustrated at her inability to escape – and her inability to be seen. Nobody was in the woods at this hour, or even outside in this weather. If only it hadn't been raining, she thought. The rain had ruined everything!

It didn't take her one look at her bonds to figure out that she'd been caught in a XANA attack. Somehow, knowing the identity of her attacker made her less afraid – after all, XANA was predictable and conquerable. She had to call the others and tell them about it as soon as she could…which she would have to do with her phone, which was buried in her bookbag back at the gate, and with her hands, which were tied together with a tentacle.

Tentacles, indeed. The thought didn't escape her, but when it came she desperately tried to think of something else.

She was hardly surprised at her destination – the familiar forest manhole, which the tendrils extended out of the open cover of. But as she approached, she was a little fearful of how she was to proceed. Would they let her go to climb or run away, or would they just pull her down the shaft, leaving her to bump into any which wall or ladder? To her surprise, the limbs were just a bit smarter than that. They stopped right at the mouth of the manhole, and a fourth, larger tentacle slid out, curled itself around her waist, and pulled her down the middle of the shaft.

She landed softly on her feet on the only platform that wasn't waterlogged. The sewer path was very different in the rain, as Ulrich had said. The water between the raised platforms, which was usually standing and stagnant, had swelled and overflowed their banks. Even this platform was grime-encrusted and slimy. She was released by all of the bonds except for two - the one that held her hands together, and the one around her waist. They still pulled her forward, but at a slower pace – fast enough to walk on her own, but not fast enough for the skateboards sitting behind her. The others moved alongside her, as if they were the bodyguards of some endangered celebrity. Clearly they had seen a problem with dragging her along the sodden, slimy maintenance floor. They did pull her right through the water, but only her ankles and boots got wet, and the strong middle tentacle held her in place. Yumi began to consider that, somehow, these tentacles could see.

After moving through unfamiliar tunnels for what seemed like an age, Yumi's path took a sharp turn to the right. She had never been in this part of the sewer before; in terms of construction there was really nothing too notable about it. There were pipes of all shapes and sizes, all gushing water – except for one pipe, the largest of them all, which was bone dry. It was out of this pipe that the tentacles extended – and Yumi knew this was to be her destination. She was pulled up and into the pipe, and set down softly on the bottom. All of the tentacles vanished, save for ones which tied her hands and feet.

She could only see about five feet in front of her – the rest of the pipe was shrouded in shadow. But whatever ugly, bug-eyed monster XANA had prepared for her, she wasn't going to let it have a docile prisoner. As soon as she was set down, she pulled at her remaining bonds.

_[Is there any other way to hold her? This form is tiring.]_

Yumi froze. It was the masculine voice she had heard in the Quad – but clearer now, clearer than she had ever heard it in her life. Perhaps it was only the pipe, but the sound seemed to surround her, separating itself into every pitch and tone. And she _knew_ the voice.

_[The walls are smooth, the door is open, and we have our hands. Toil is nothing.]_

And the feminine voice – it wasn't feminine anymore, not at all. Her brain was forcing herself not to acknowledge it, but she knew this voice too. She wouldn't believe it – the situation didn't make sense. "What – who's there? This isn't funny anymore!"

_[She asks to see what has been hidden.]_

_[How rare for a human…but never impossible.]_

In the darkness, Yumi's eyes had just begun to make out a large mass, one about twice as tall and three times as wide as Yumi herself, curled against the mesh side of the pipe. The bottom of the mass curled and writhed, and the top was completely unidentifiable. As she watched, the mass began to move. It straightened up even taller, shuddered, and walked – crawled? – slowly forward, until it was only five feet away, and completely visible.

After one glimpse of the top, she forced herself to look at the bottom. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight purple tentacles, all arranged in a circle around each other, aside from the ones holding her in place. Fearsome, she tried to tell herself. Monstrous. Monstrous enough never to have to look at the top. They were smooth and scaly, like the tails of snakes, and as far as Yumi was concerned, this was enough. Nothing existed above the monster's waist, nothing at all.

_[Oh, how adorable.] _Both the tendrils and the masculine voice drew closer, and a shadow fell over Yumi's vision.

_[Your opinion of us has never changed, has it?] _Yumi felt something wrap around her chin. It was not a tentacle this time, but a hand – a warm, soft, and very human hand. No, it was _two_ hands, one caressing each side of her face. She looked up involuntarily, and what she saw made her jerk back in shock, unable to make a sound.

Two torsos, human from head to hips, grew out of the source of the tendril mass. They were both male, naked, and fused, like conjoined twins, at the back – each torso was the back of the other. Other than this, the torsos were complete. They had four arms between them, two abdomens that turned to scales at the navel, and two heads. The two sides, unlike conjoined twins, were not identical. The body on the left had thicker muscle definition than the one on the right, though both were smooth and strong. The heads were handsome, too, but each in different ways. The left head had harder, older features and a wild mop of black hair, while the right head was softer, with a somewhat more sensible brown cut. And it was this, the heads, which was the most terrifying of all to Yumi – because she knew them as well as she knew their voices.

"Ulrich…?" she said in a voice that was more of a squeak. "William…?"

_[Yes?] _the two heads said in unison as they pulled away – except, as Yumi could now see, their lips had not moved at all_. _The voices had come out of what appeared to be thin air, and Ulrich's and William's faces were just as silent as they had been before. Their features, she now couldn't help but notice, were familiar but ethereal, as if they had taken on an air of perfection without actually changing at all. Despite this beauty, they were bone-chillingly cold – both heads wore identical blank expressions. They betrayed no emotion with their eyes, but something about their carriage gave off an air of intense pride.

Yumi's own pride, her own lack of fear of an inhuman pawn of XANA, had evaporated, and was too busy trying to make sense of what she was seeing even to be afraid. "What?" was all she could think to say as she looked from one head to the other. "What? What?"

_[What indeed. This is far more familiar,] _the Ulrich-head said, and this, this was even worse. It would have been far better if the creature had not been able to talk – or even only if it ever gave a straight answer.

_[Yumi Ishiyama,] _the William-head digressed. He twisted the body, which had been sideways before, so that only he faced her. _[We've waited days and years for you.]_

_

* * *

_

"Well, here we are," Jeremie said. His statement was rather unnecessary - all of the Warriors had memorized where his dorm room was. But, it was a good lead-in to his salutation. "We'll see you guys later. You'd better go let Kiwi out before he does it himself."

"I'll say," Ulrich said all-too-knowingly. He gave a smile, waved, turned away, and started down the hall.

"See you at dinner, guys!" Odd shouted as he walked after him. "Don't have too much fun in there, okay?"

"Don't worry, Odd, I'll make sure Jeremie doesn't have any fun at all!" Aelita grinned at their retreating backs, and then turned to her partner. "Hear that? No fun, no slacking off, _no smiling_." She was trying her hardest to keep a straight face.

"Curses, foiled again," Jeremie said with a smile just as wide. He opened the door to his dorm and made an 'after-you' motion with his left hand. "How could I not smile when I'm looking at you?"

"Aww." As soon as the door was closed – and just in time, as Jim was just passing by – Aelita kissed Jeremie on the cheek, patting him on the head as she did so. **Your hair's all wet**, she said as she pulled away.

"Is this supposed to surprise me?" Jeremie said. He made a beeline for his computer, and Aelita for the bed. He sat in his chair, spun to face her, and unloaded his bag as she retrieved her laptop. "On to business. Let see if any of our friends in the Digital Sea want to let us know that they still exist…" He pulled out his own laptop, opened it, and made a face. "Ugh, it's out of power!" He closed it again, and rummaged in his bag for a power cord. "That's the last time I let Ulrich borrow anything I own."

"Oh, was he watching his 'stories'?" Aelita giggled as she watched Jeremie struggle.

"If you ask him, he'll deny everything," Jeremie said gravely. "But I have to keep this charged…all of these cords look the same…"

"Um…" Aelita's face twitched, as if she had remembered something. "I had an idea last night for a program to auto-reload the Navskid missiles, so we won't always have to take to our heels whenever a Kongre decides to chase us around." She pounded her palm with her fist for effect. "It could work on the same sort of code as Odd's laser arrows, couldn't it?"

"Hm…" Jeremie looked up from his bag. "Maybe! But it's not going to be easy to extract just one bit of code from the outfit data and modify it for a non-organic…" He mumbled, as if to neutralize the topic. "We'll see if it's possible, but it might be easier from the supercomputer. We can still scan the network from here, though…and that just brings us closer to not needing the Skid at all." He smiled awkwardly. "Right?"

Aelita nodded, looking just a little melancholy. "Of course. Look…" She stood. "I have to go use the bathroom. You go start without me, okay?"

"Oh…of course," he said, the enthusiasm in his voice dying with every word. He turned away from Aelita's retreating back, and worked on untangling his laptop cord. He knew it was a necessity to bring up all of Lyoko's issues, being that it was his duty to solve them, but they always made conversations with Aelita too uncertain for his liking. If things could have been like he thought they were at the beginning, when he thought Aelita was a computer program, he couldn't help but think that none of them would have existed…

He had finished untangling the cord when he heard the door shut, and a few seconds later, when he had plugged the cord in, he heard someone jiggling the door handle. He turned around, confused at the sound. "It's open!" he yelled.

The jiggling stopped, and then the door opened very slowly, with several moments of hesitation. Aelita was back, standing still in the doorway and still clutching the door handle. Jeremie felt even more confused. "Uh…that was quick!"

**Really? **Aelita let go of the door handle and moved her hand back to her side in a jerky sort of motion. She walked forward past the bed, toward Jeremie, with the same sort of jerking gait. **I don't think so. I think it's been far, far, far too long.**

Something twisted in Jeremie's gut, but he tried to ignore it. "What are you talking about? You've only been gone for a few seconds! Did you even go? Unless you're messing with me…"

**Why would I ever do that to you, Jeremie? **Aelita was at his chair now; she was clutching the sides with her hands. He realized that her voice had a different inflection than he had grown used to – it was light, airy, and had an air of electric distortion to it, as if it was passing through a filter. **You know that I would never do anything to hurt you. And why would anyone want to hurt someone as wonderful as you?**

She leaned over the side of the chair, and spoke right in his ear. Jeremie shuddered. Part of him wanted to be charmed – even aroused – but another part of him was working out everything he'd heard and arriving at an answer he didn't like. He turned to look her right in the eye. "Aelita, what's going on?"

**What else? **Jeremie's eyes went wide. Even though Aelita had been talking, her mouth had not moved. A split second's closer look made him notice that she wasn't blinking – or breathing. Her face was completely frozen, but frozen in a small, sweet smile.

**What? **Aelita said in her light, soothing tone. **What, what is it, Jeremie? **

"_Aelita_?" Jeremie began, horrorstruck - but was struck dumb as Aelita's hand brushed against his face. He didn't move, and her smile did not change, as her hand moved down his face, meeting her other hand at the base of his neck. Her fingernails clutched his skin, and Jeremie's eyes rolled back into his head.

**What's wrong? **Aelita went on, wrapping her arms around his chest. **You know, if there's a problem, Jeremie, you can always talk to me about it.**

**

* * *

**

_[Yumi Ishiyama. We've waited days and years for you.]_

The William-head leaned down to Yumi's eye level, and her eyes opened wide with fear. It was at about this time that her mental capacities returned, and the questions began to flow. What was this creature? Why did it have Ulrich and William's heads? Why was it talking to her rather than killing her? _Why did it have Ulrich and William's heads? _She tried to punch her way through her fear to ask these questions, but when her mouth finally opened – as the creature was waiting patiently for her to do – the words didn't quite come out that way. "You- what-"

_[Are you going to ask what we are again?] _The creature straightened back up again, and the William-head folded its arms across its chest._ [Why are you asking when you already know our names?] _

_[The "what" is correct,] _the Ulrich-head piped back in, turning its head so that Yumi could see him. _[You're right about the "what."]_

"You? No…" Yumi shook her head furiously before looking up at the two heads, channeling frustration into an imitation of courage. "Cut the crap for a second!"

The two heads looked at each other for a split second, as if sharing a thought, and then the Ulrich-head turned back to her. _[We're not stalling anything, if that's what you think.]_

_[We've waited days and years for you,] _the William-head repeated, twisting its neck to face her.

"No! That…" Yumi couldn't figure out what the creature wanted, or even what threat it might pose – any wrong word, her instincts told her, and it might attack. "You're not-"

_[I think she thinks we're speaking nonsense,] _the Ulrich-head said._ [But why should we make sense to everyone? We know what we're talking about.]_

_[There is no sense in solving a puzzle if you already know all the answers,] _the William-head said with a smug air.

"Puzzle?" Yumi said to herself. She tried to stay on guard, but as she was not dead, she found that reasonable speech was no longer beyond her. "Look," she said, trying to decide whether or not to look the creatures in the eyes, "You seem to be able to understand what I'm saying, so I'm going to say this as clearly as I can. Who are you, and what do you want?"

_[Why should we tell you anything? You have all the information you need,] _the William-head hissed.

_[But we could tell you that all day,] _the Ulrich-head finished.

These words brought Yumi a measure of realization, but with that came more confusion. The creature operated on a certain set of rules, and for some strange reason it wouldn't do anything to her until she answered her own question. Whatever answer she gave would cause progress – but possibly death.

_[Human beings can only survive for 96 hours without water,] _the William-head piped in. It was right – she was trapped. Seeing death at the end of one road, Yumi took the other. _You already know our names…_that was almost too easy. _You're right about the "what"_…

"You're Ulrich and William," she said. The creature did not react. "But…no, you're _called _Ulrich and William. But you're not…" No reaction. "You're fake. You don't exist." No reaction. "Fake, unreal, mythical…" She ran through as many synonyms as she could. "Imaginary, inhuman…"

The creature remained still for a moment, and then the Ulrich-head lifted its chin. _[See, Yumi? That wasn't so hard.] _

The William-head did the same, taking in the incredulous look on her face. _[Your words are your most powerful weapon, and you have used them well.]_

_[You are a novice, to be sure…] _said the Ulrich-head.

_[But you have the potential for rapid improvement,] _said the William-head.

_[Always keep your words in practice; we cannot emphasize this enough,] _said the Ulrich-head.

Yumi found herself nodding, even though she still didn't understand a word this creature was saying. Its response calmed her against her will – while it was still a fearful enigma, it hadn't hurt her yet. "Words…well…yes, I used words. And I will…I think. So…" Her voice dropped to a mumble. "If there's nothing else I need to do, can I…"

_[No,] _the heads said at the same time.

_[You are not finished,] _the Ulrich-head said in a stern tone. It rushed at Yumi with impossible speed, stopping just short of her face, and looking her right in the eyes. _[This is the closest you have ever come to starting.]_

_[The dilemma will not rest until it has been answered,] _the William-head clarified from behind.

"Dilemma?" Yumi repeated. She stared right into the Ulrich-head's eyes, amazed and frightened at how familiar and unfamiliar they were. "Another one?" she said without fully realizing the words had left her mouth.

_[How else will they survive?] _the Ulrich-head said. The body pulled itself back upright. _[Don't worry. This is our last and best, our foundation.]_

_[But it is a dilemma Yumi Ishiyama can solve,] _the William-head said.

_[A dilemma that only Yumi Ishiyama can decide,] _the Ulrich-head said.

_[It is a dilemma of commands and outcomes.]_

_[Only one answer is allowed.]_

_[And when you answer, you will be freed.]_

Yumi gave a small, involuntary gasp. The Ulrich-head did not notice, or care to give it notice, and went on. _[Do you want to hear it?]_

_[It is nothing but a sentence.]_

_[We will repeat it as many times as you wish.]_

_[Human beings can survive for only 96 hours without water.]_

Yumi's wrists ached from trying to break the tentacle's hold – whatever this creature wanted to do, she was powerless to fight it. If this creature's riddle was simple, she could be freed without trouble – though why it had happened at all she could never figure out – but if not, she could only hope that something else had shown up to tip her friends off to XANA's attack. "I don't have a choice, do I?" she mumbled with all the power she could.

When she spoke, something changed in the creature's carriage – it held itself straighter and taller, as if this was the moment it had been born for. Both heads turned toward her, and she noticed the slightest change in the creature's faces – while they still wore blank expressions, something in their eyes and lips betrayed tension.

They said together, _[Which one of us most deserves to die?]_

* * *

"God, they're cute."

"You're saying that like it's a bad thing."

"Why not?" Odd casually brushed his hand against the opposite wall as he walked. "There's nothing wrong with being cute. The world needs cute things; me, for instance."

He gave Ulrich a sly grin; clearly that last sentence had been added for shock value. Ulrich, knowing Odd, had no truck with it. "I think we have two different definitions for the same word."

"Ha ha. Still, I can't help but smile when I see something like that, and neither can you. So there."

"Yeah, that's more like it." Ulrich and Odd stopped when they reached the door to their dorm room. Ulrich fumbled in his bag for his key. "Sometimes I wish I could be that happy and carefree with someone else…"

"And with just a sentence I know my plans for the evening," Odd said in a haughty, mocking tone. He leaned on the doorknob.

"You know, Odd, someday your mouth is going to kill you," Ulrich said. The next second, his eyes were on the doorknob. "Wait, is the door open?"

Odd's eyes went wide, and he looked down at his hand – he had turned the knob without realizing it. "Huh, did we forget to close it?" He shrugged, opened the door, took a look inside, and made a strangled sort of noise. "Guh-"

"What, what is it?" Ulrich began, but as soon as he saw the inside of his room, his question was answered for him. His jaw dropped, and he shouted an expletive.

The room was in ruins. Both closets and every available drawer had been flung open, and their contents – clothes, magazines, video games – had been scattered all over the room. The window had been opened from the bottom, and several hours' worth of rain had already soaked the desks and most of the room. Almost every available surface was covered in mud. There was mud all over the carpet, the beds – Ulrich's more than Odd's – the desks, the walls, and anything that had once been in a drawer. This included Kiwi – he was out in the middle of the floor, gleefully rolling on the sodden, muddy carpet.

"Kiwi, no-!" Both boys ran into the room. Odd crouched by Kiwi, who jumped up with joy and shook muddy water into his master's face. Ulrich climbed on top of a chair and shut the window with a groan. He stepped down into a puddle, soaking his cuffs with another groan.

"This place is a mess," he said, moving back towards the beds. "Someone's been in here!"

"Ya think? Ugh – Kiwi, stay still!" Odd had picked a dry shirt up off Ulrich's bed and was trying to clean Kiwi off with it with some difficulty – the little dog was far too excited by the commotion. "The drawers are all open…" Odd's eyes went wide. "Is anything gone?"

"Probably." Ulrich looked at his disheveled dresser. "Come on, help me!"

"But I have to calm him down! What if someone hears him?"

"Alright," Ulrich said, turning away, "but hurry–" He did a double take, and pointed at Kiwi. "Hey, that's MY shirt!"

"So?" Odd held up the open-front shirt. "You haven't worn it in months."

Ulrich made an exasperated sort of noise and splashed his way over to his dresser. When he got there, he began pulling drawers open and shut, scanning them for anything that might be missing. "That's on the floor, that's on the floor…" He looked up from the last drawer when he was done. "Okay, nothing – MY STUFF!"

"Your what?" Ulrich didn't answer Odd's question – he ran over to his bed and pointed at his wall. Normally, Ulrich had a martial arts poster, several throwing stars, and a set of nunchucks hanging over his bed, but the nunchucks and stars were missing, and the poster was ripped down the middle.

"Oh, that stuff!" Odd zipped Kiwi in his bag and jumped up. "Did the thief want to play ninja that badly?"

"Yeah, well, good luck to them! Do you know how long it took me to convince the principal they weren't real?" Ulrich froze for a second, realizing something. "Wait –" He crouched by his bed and tore through the drawers on its side. "Thought so – the Swiss army knife's gone!" He looked back over at Odd. "Whoever was in here, they're stealing weapons!"

"You sure about that?" While Ulrich had been searching, Odd had started on his own dresser. He had Kiwi's drawer open in front of him and a confused look on his face. "I didn't know dog toys were that deadly, then!"

"What?" Ulrich walked over to the drawer, and sure enough, all of Kiwi's toys were missing. His leash, food, and bowls remained, as did a wad of ten-Euro notes stuffed in the back of the drawer. Ulrich and Odd looked up at each other. "_What_?" Ulrich repeated.

"What are you looking for? I don't know what happened!" He looked back at the drawer in confusion. "Who would want weapons and dog toys?"

"I don't know. Anyone that can pick a lock."

"Okay, so that narrows it down to every student in the school." Odd thought for a second. "Maybe it was Sissi! Busting us for a knife and a dog, that's two birds with one stone…somehow…"

"Good try, but I doubt it. Sissi wouldn't want to be anywhere near all this mud…" Ulrich shook his head. "We should probably go report this to Jim."

"Yeah, if he can help us find who did it." In a flash of inspiration, Odd shoved the wad of money and the rest of Kiwi's effects into his bag. His timing was impeccable – Ulrich had already reached the door without waiting for him, and when he opened the door, he just narrowly missed Jim's face.

"Stern!" Jim held his hands up against an impact, and took a step back. He was soaked through, and looked somewhat more annoyed than usual. "Watch where you're throwing that! You're not the only one using this hallway –"

"Jim, someone broke into our room!" Ulrich interrupted.

Jim's expression hardly changed, but there was a vastly different meaning behind it. He was no longer annoyed – he was determined. "Broke in?" He stepped closer to Ulrich. "How do you know?"

"Do you think we would do this?" Ulrich opened the door wider, so that Jim could see the room. It looked just as it had when Ulrich and Odd had walked in, minus Kiwi. Odd was standing by the door with Ulrich, carefully guarding his bag. Jim gaped at the room for about five seconds, and then stepped inside. He walked all around, taking in every detail, before shouting, "Another one!"

"Another one?" Odd repeated, confused.

"Another one!" Jim turned around and pointed at the door. "This wasn't our burglar's first stop! Or last stop, if he went to the toolshed first…well, whatever order he robbed them in, the toolshed has also been robbed!" Ulrich and Odd gave each other uncertain looks. "What's missing? I don't know…anything sharp or rusty?"

"No," Ulrich said quickly.

"There's sixty Euros missing from the dresser." Odd pointed at Kiwi's now-empty drawer. Jim looked over at the drawer, scratching his chin. Without another word, he walked over to the dresser and started throwing all the drawers open. Odd giggled softly at him. Ulrich just shook his head. His gaze drifted over to the window. Rain was still beating outside where it belonged, but despite the downpour, the man standing outside did not react, or even move at all.

The man? Ulrich blinked. He tried to look again, but the man had vanished. He wasn't sure if it was the same man he had seen during his test, having paid the same amount of attention before, but the sightings were wholly unusual. He turned to Odd, intending to ask in a whisper if he had ever seen the man, but Jim returned before he could get Odd's attention.

"Alright…" He gave Odd an odd look. "Well, it looks like we had a little thief let loose on campus! This could be very serious…" He walked over to the doorway, paused, and turned around. "Well, come on! You'll give a better statement to the principal than I will!"

"Wait a minute," Odd started, leaning down for his bag. Ulrich realized with a start that his cell phone was still in his bag, as Odd's probably was. "My stuff-"

"Will be recovered as soon as Mr. Delmas notifies the police!" Jim grabbed them both by their collars and led them out of the room. "Come on…"

* * *

Aelita's walk up the stairs to the girls' floor was a calm one. She didn't run into anyone, and no one ran into her. The solitude left her free to hum a half-remembered tune – she wasn't sure when she remembered it from, whether from last week, last year, or fifteen years in the past. But it was a nice tune, and it comforted her immensely. It was a connection, something that reminded her that she was in the real world, that she was alive. It was the bane of her existence that she had to remind herself of this sometimes.

One uneventful girls' bathroom visit later, she was on the same stairs, but she took them far less urgently. She wanted to savor the time where she didn't have to remember the problems that she had to return to – where she could stay in a place where Lyoko couldn't find her. Still, she did reach the end of the steps, and with calm resignation she started to open the door that led to the boys' dorms.

_meow_

Aelita stopped, confused. She had definitely heard a distinct "meow" from the other side of the door, but she knew for a fact that the only animal on that floor was a dog. _Does someone have a video on too loud?_ she thought. _Yes, probably._ She opened the door to the boys' floor, discarding her suspicions.

_meow_

_meowmeow_

She stopped cold in the doorway and looked around. There was not a cat, dog, or human in sight – just an empty, silent hallway. She shook her head, but still walked down the hallway with caution, watching her feet with tension. She was reaching a fork in the road – there was one wing that led forward, and one that branched off to the left. Jeremie's room was on the left, as was Ulrich and Odd's.

_meow_

_meow_

_meowmeowmeow_

Aelita snapped to attention. "Turn it down!" she yelled toward the left wing, which only earned her a loud, angry "YOU turn it down!" from a closed door in the opposite direction. The mewing didn't stop this time – it continued, soft, silent, and constant, from the left wing. With a growing sense of confusion, she ran forward, hoping to the real source of the sound, but stopped at the mouth of the hallway when a cat stepped into her path.

It was a very small cat, somewhat older than a kitten, with flattened ears and a stub of a tail. It had triangle-shaped yellow streaks of fur on its cheeks and back, which contrasted oddly with the rest of its purple fur. It did not appear to be mewing, though the noise went on, and did not even look up as it turned down the hallway that Aelita had come from and -

"Purple fur?" Aelita said aloud with alarm, doing a double take back at the cat. At the sound of her voice, it looked up at her and meowed – as did the three other, identical cats that had joined it. They were all familiar-looking – horribly so. Eight more cats joined the other four, who were now moving past her in neat rows of three, mewing softly. Not wasting another minute, she stepped over them and looked down the hall.

_meow_

Her jaw dropped - it was just as she had hoped that she would not find. There were three neat rows of hundreds and hundreds of completely identical cats walking at a leisurely pace down the middle of the hallway. The line came from another turn in the hallway, past which Aelita could not see, and did not seem to have any beginning or end. The cats mewed endlessly, and never looked up at her or changed their pace.

_meowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeow_

"Oh no…Jeremie!" Aelita knew what to do, and she did it without thinking. Jeremie's room was only four doors away, and chances were that he already knew about XANA's attack. The kittens made no attempt to stop her as she ran past them. Once she got to the door, she reached for the handle. "Jeremie, look! XANA's –"

Without a sound or any warning, the handle vanished from underneath her hand – as did the rest of the door. Aelita gasped, and looked down at her hand. She took a step back, fully expecting to tread on one of the cats, but bumped into a wall instead. Taking a wild look around, she saw that all of the cats and all of the doors had vanished. She was standing in a perfectly circular room with the exact coloring of the dorm corridor, but without doors or any means of escape.

"How…how did this happen?" she said aloud to herself. She felt along the side of the wall she had bumped into. To her surprise, she grabbed a doorknob on her right side, one that was both locked and, when she turned to look, completely invisible. She only looked, however, after the doorknob had grown so hot that she had to jerk her hand away.

"Owww…" Aelita rubbed her hand gingerly – she had been hurt, but now she knew how the room worked. Knowing no other way out, she felt her way along the wall, growing more and more frightened with every wrong doorknob. Whatever had happened, whatever XANA was trying to do, it was keeping her away from Jeremie – Jeremie was in danger. So she tried and tried, and after four wrong doorknobs and one terribly smarting hand, she finally came to a doorknob that turned harmlessly. A door appeared in the wall beneath the knob, and Aelita flung the door open. "Jeremie!"

* * *

**Jeremie?**

**Jeremie, can you hear me?**

Jeremie wasn't aware of any transition away from his room. One minute, he had been sitting in his chair, turning to greet Aelita, and the next, he was…here. He didn't know what to call where he was, or even how to be curious as to how he got there. He knew he was floating, but the question as to how he was floating never crossed his mind.

**Jeremie…wake up.**

Jeremie's eyes flew open at the command. A sudden, violent wave of comfort swept over him at the sight of where he was, but he could not for the life of him remember why. It was a yellowish, formless abyss, with no one and nothing but himself floating inside it. It was a very familiar place, a place he felt like he had been in a long time ago.

**Jeremie…!**

The voice cut through Jeremie's stupor like a knife – he knew who it was, and he didn't question why she was there. "Uh…Aelita!"

He held his hand out in the direction of her voice, and watched with amazement as she floated into view. First came a head, and then the rest of her body, formed out of nothing and coming closer all the time. He reached out with more effort, pulling himself closer to her with every ounce of his strength. Their fingertips dangled near each other for what felt like an eternity before, finally, her fingers intertwined with his.

**Jeremie. **Aelita's body floated down from its position, creating the impression that she was standing on nothing. Jeremie found himself floating down as well, as if he was obeying a command.

"Aelita…" Jeremie couldn't help but be taken aback by the form before him. It was Aelita, at last, an Aelita with elfin ears and green eyes, an Aelita made perfect by computer graphics. He didn't know why, he couldn't fathom why, but he was filled with a sense of warmth and triumph. Somewhere deep in his being, a hole, long empty, had been filled by the sight of her.

**Do you remember this place, Jeremie? **Aelita caught his hand in midair and lowered it to his side; Jeremie did not protest. They stood hand in hand in the abyss while Aelita waited for Jeremie's answer. Jeremie made no effort to remember; remembering did not concern him. **Where is it? Tell me.**

Jeremie said nothing, but Aelita only smiled at him. She looked out into the abyss, directing him to do the same. **It's the limbo between your world and my own. Don't you remember? You came to see me, and you were trapped here. But then… **She looked back at him with an even larger smile. **I saved you. I came back and got you. I touched you for the first time…**

Aelita let go of Jeremie's hands, but she didn't move away. In fact, she moved even closer, until she was practically touching noses with him. She put her left hand on his shoulder, and her right hand on his waist. The touches sent an electric shock through him – unfamiliar feelings filled his body and indistinct thoughts filled his mind. Something had changed about Aelita's face – it was sharper, and more alluring, but it had not lost the kind look it had always had.

**You were so happy to see me…** she said in a low, lingering voice, **and that made me happy, too. Didn't it? **Jeremie's mouth opened and closed, and he made several wet, gaping noises like a fish, but no words came out.** No, you don't have to say anything. I know.** She moved her left hand up his shoulder and onto his neck; the sensation sent a shiver down Jeremie's spine.

As Jeremie said nothing, and nothing else happened, Aelita moved and talked more and more, and the words washed over his stagnant mind. **I was alone for such a long time, you know. And when you found me, it was the happiest moment of my life. You were my savior, Jeremie. The only one I could trust and love. You were, and you are, someone who is mine and mine alone…**

"Mine and mine alone…" Jeremie repeated, the first words he had said in an age. How long had he been there? Minutes? Weeks? Years? He didn't care. When he found Aelita, it was the happiest moment of his life. She was his, and his alone…

**Mine…and mine…alone… **Aelita moved her left hand down to Jeremie's torso with the other and pulled him in even closer. Soon enough, their bodies were pressed together. Aelita's head was on Jeremie's right shoulder; she now spoke directly in his ear. **Let's stay here forever, Jeremie. We don't have to go anywhere. Lyoko can die, and Earth can fall, but I'll always be here…**

Suddenly, Aelita froze rigid in Jeremie's arms. Jeremie found himself with the presence of mind to look down at her – and was shocked by what he saw. Something in her face was distorted – her eyes were wide as dinner plates, and her mouth was stretched into a grimace. "Uh…Aelita?" he started.

**No…**Aelita was breathing very heavily, and her voice had gained a frantic tone. **No…NO! STAY AWAY! **

"What's wrong?" Jeremie said, but Aelita did not respond to him. For the first time in that world, he felt panic – but had no idea where to direct it. Aelita's arms closed in tighter around his waist, until they could have crushed his ribcage. **STAY AWAY! **she kept repeating, in a tone that grew wilder and wilder with every word. **HE'S MINE! MINE! ALL MINE! ALL MINE! ALLL MIIINNNEEEE-!**

_Slap._

Jeremie felt a strong, sharp pain across his face. He gasped and shook his head, trying to adjust himself to the sudden bright light on his face. He realized his surroundings very quickly. He was lying on the floor of his room, curled in a fetal position, just a foot from his chair. Aelita was kneeling next to him, holding an open palm next to his face and a horrified look on her own.

* * *

More interpretation! Only one this time –

**Your hair's all wet. **/ "Your hair's all wet."

Hard to interpret, right? The rest of it doesn't need interpretation, if you figured that out.

Thank you for sticking with me!

- Carth


End file.
